chickens coming home
“Now what Malcolm X said when got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was, in fact, true. America’s chickens…are coming home…to roost.”
Words spoken in the aftermath of the horror of 9/11 and they remain just as poignant today. That fateful hour saw America visited by the very same death and destruction she has so often sown around the world. And here again, because the American people have yet to study history – much less learn from it – more chickens are making their way home to roost. This time in the form of torture, drones and indefinite detention.
This week, a federal judge authorized the force-feeding of California prisoners currently on hunger strike. Of course, this type of torture is nothing new to the dozens of “enemy combatants” incarcerated in the empire’s naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Over the past couple years, the Federal Aviation Administration has approved the use of drones over U.S. airspace, clearing the way for Americans to feel a taste of the terror endured daily by civilians in Northwest Pakistan. And not least, in 2011, the federal government empowered the U.S. military to imprison American citizens – without charge, without trial, anywhere in the world, for any amount of time…a grave threat that our Muslim brethren worldwide have become very familiar with.
For decades, most people in these United States have been largely exempt from such horrific crimes against humanity. No longer. Atrocities that were once greeted with a blind eye are now affecting American citizens. And will continue to do so relative to the level of resistance put forth by people living within the empire’s immediate borders.
This chapter in history has yet to be completed though. And many proletarians – including P.A.N.D.A., Drones Watch and Close Gitmo - are actively working to reverse the current totalitarian course. How effectively we organize and resist such fascism will determine its limits. The accuracy in Reverend Wright’s words rings just as loudly as the truth in Frederick Douglass’s . . .
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
